We came up with these story cubes as an activity to help my child learn to read. They are a mix between Rory’s Story Cubes (they were featured in our last Toy Guide) and Bob’s Books. We use a mixture of Bob Books, Progressive Phonics and the free printables at Hubbard’s Cupboard for our reading curriculum with our preschool and kindergarten kiddos. Currently, we are looking for a way to extend the reading lessons as we are waiting for the next stage of Bob Books to arrive. Hence, extra reading practice with story cubes. The kids love rolling the dice to create new sentences with familiar words. I think the repetition of words in the cubes helps them develop both their reading speed and confidence.
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What you need to make your own Story Cubes:
- 5-6 Blocks – you can use more if you want to add complication
- Painter’s tape (so you can remove the tape and replace the words at whim)
- Permanent marker
- Bob’s Books (or Progressive Phonics, both have repetitive words)
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Pick six names or nouns, write them on one block, pick 6 sight words and write them on two additional blocks, write 6 different action words on another block and on the final block write 6 nouns. Once we created our blocks, my younger preschooler would roll the blocks and my older preschooler would put the sentence in order (with my help) and read it to us. Don’t have Bob Books or have a child obsessed with a particular movie/narrative? Adapt the blocks to fit their interests.
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Words I put on my sentence blocks:
Block 1 –
- Sam
- Dot
- Mac
- Jig
- Mit
- Peg
Blocks 2 & 3 –
- is/was
- on/in
- the
- has/had
- a
- with
Block 4 –
- sat
- ran
- got
- win
- hid
- tug
Block 5 –
- mat
- mud
- bag
- box
- rag
- hat
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Have you made any learning manipulatives to help your kids read?
I would love to hear about them!
Other posts you might be interested in:
- A collection of activities for kids starting to read – these are phonics based.
- A game to help with sight words – great for the kinetic or hyperactive child.
- Ten ways to help your child with reading comprehension.
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Cute idea! I know you can purchase the wooden blocks at craft stores, and use them for all kinds of learning activities.
I have a free printable word family bingo game at Preschool Universe that’s great for beginning readers:
http://www.preschooluniverse.com/2012/04/word-family-bingo-free-printable/
What a really cool concept – I can’t wait to do this when my toddler gets to this stage!
This is a great idea. I think I will adapt it to help teach the alphabet and graduate on to this in time. So far we have been using techniques including alphabet toys and alphabet frieze decorations to build a good foundation. Thanks for the inspiration.
Nice! I have some wooden blocks like these. This idea would work for a lot of beginning reader books.
That’s great. I had looked at some premade unifix cubes but I didn’t like that they were premade with the words that they had chosen. This is a great idea and I like that you can redo them with new words. I think you could do it with letters and do making words activities too.
A fantastic hands-on idea for reading! You could also use printable cube templates if you didn’t have any blocks on hand.
This is a great hands on learning for teaching reading. I will be make my group a set.